Fireworks - (Modern Plays) by Dalia Taha (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

There's no-one in the streets but us. You run that way and I'll run this way. Whoever gets back to the front door first without getting shot, wins.

In a Palestinian town eleven-year-old Lubna and twelve-year-old Khalil are playing on the empty stairwell in their apartment block. As the siege intensifies outside, fear for their safety becomes as crippling as the conflict itself.

Dalia Taha's play offers a new way of seeing how war fractures childhood. Fireworks (Al'ab Nariya) is part of International Playwrights: A Genesis Foundation Project and received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 12 February 2015.

Review Quotes

"A frighteningly convincing picture of the tragedy of lost innocence." --Guardian

"Dalia Taha's play offers a refreshingly oblique perspective on the conflict in Gaza." --Evening Standard

"Powerfully written" --Stage

"Taha's writing, beautifully translated by Clem Naylor, is bracingly naturalistic, immersing us fully in her characters' tense, circumscribed lives through a series of vignettes." --Observer

"Relentless yet delicate, beautiful but grim. The combination is dizzying and destabilising . . . What Taha does brilliantly is convey the precarity of life in Palestine, then trace its over-arching psychological and philosophical impact." --WhatsOnStage

"Quietly devastating" --Time Out London

About the Author

Dalia Taha is a Palestinian poet and playwright. She was born in Berlin in 1986 and grew up in Ramallah, Palestine. Her first play, Keffiyeh/Made in China, was produced by the Flemish Royal Theatre and A.M. Qattan Foundation, and premiered in Brussels before touring seven Palestinian cities across the West Bank. Dalia Taha is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Brown University and has published two collections of poetry and one novel